When you build your first company and it gets bigger over time, registering a patent for all the contents shared or products made in your company should be one of your consideration in order to protect your business in the future. Unfortunately, however, you might have noticed that most employees are not aware of the importance of protecting intellectual property assets in your company. How should you deal with this situation, then?

Stephen Garfield, director of corporate account management at Copyright Clearance Center, wrote in his article that nearly all of employees believe copyright is important to protect their organisation’s intellectual property. Yet, almost half (47 percent) individual contributors admit they do not think about copyright issues before forwarding published information. Whereas, in fact, they recognise the serious risks and copyright implications associated with exchanging published information.

Bert Markgraf at Chron stated that in 2002, copyrighted material made up more than 5 percent of U.S. gross national product and totaled almost $350 billion. It means, you will likely incur billions of profit loss if you do not build awareness to your employees about the importance of copyright materials.

See also: Things Employees Should Notice in an Employment Contract

In order to prevent you from experiencing any loss regarding copyrighted information, Garfield has shared 3 quick tips to increase copyright awareness among employees.

Tips #1 A continuous reminder

You should always provide a continuous reminder to make your staff aware of company’s copyright policy, especially to new hires. Also, it is important thing to do when you receive an ongoing reinforcement in order to retain longer information given.

Tips #2 Always use specific examples/cases

When you conduct a training regarding copyright awareness, you should always include specific use of cases. By doing so, it is expected that employees will understand granular aspects of their company policy. Garfield mentioned that you can give a scenario example. “If your company has just been featured in an influential trade journal, can the article be copied and sent to a small group of coworkers? Or, if you have permission to use an entire article, can you extract one chart and put it in a presentation?”. Therefore, attaching a note in every published media you have could also be one of strategies to build awareness.

Tips #3 Always provide accessible answer

Oftentimes, employees are confused when to turn to with copyright questions, especially if they do not receive thorough training. Therefore, you should provide an accessible answer for employees to easily get answer to their question. “Designate a copyright expert or department that can answer these questions, and make this service known to your entire organisation,” Garfield suggested.

Read also: In-House or Outsourced HR Team: Which One Is Better For Your Company?